Nine Queens

A film that had been sitting in my Netflix queue for years (it's from 2000), Nine Queens is a celebrated film in Argentina, written and directed by Fabian Belinsky and from one of my favorite genres--the con man movie.

Ricardo Darin plays a low-level grifter, who mostly steals money from old ladies. One evening he's in a gas station convenience store and sees a younger man, (Gaston Pauls), pulling a change-making scam on the clerk. He takes him under his wing and the two pull small cons. But then, Darin's sister (Leticia Bredice), even though she can't stand him, reunites him with an old partner, who has a scam worth thousands, and deals with counterfeit stamps--the Nine Queens.

Darin and Pauls make a winning couple, as Darin is pretty much conscienceless and Pauls is too empathetic to make a good criminal. Notably, all of the low-lifes in this film pointedly say they are not thieves, as though that was a place they were unwilling to go within themselves.

As Darin and Pauls try to get the stamps they encounter obstacles, and Pauls is constantly wary of the schemes Darin may be hatching. There are several twists along the way, and though I'm embarrassed to admit it, I didn't see the very big twist coming at the end. There's no way I'm spoiling it, because the main pleasure in watching this film is absorbing the twist and then playing the film backward in your head and realizing how the pieces fit together.

The film was remade in the U.S. as Criminal, which is coming up on my Netflix queue.